[ssmallz]

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raise the flop.

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Giving some reasoning would be good here man especially since I think piching off your own action and possibly getting it HU with the best hand is a mistake. I know we may clean up out our ace outs but I don't think that will buy up the lost equity from destroying our implied odds.

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i want to clean up an ace out and if button has two kings or queens he may 3ball and we can go lots of bets with lots of equity.

but the SB probably has AJ so we should call. bleh

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Think about this a bit. What will he do if he has KK or QQ after we call? What will he do if we raise? Basically when you answer those you realize that either way he raises. When we call we then get to call re-raise after trapping all the loose flop peelers who now fold out of disgust (which is fine we like dead money) or call (which is also fine since we have such good equity).

A few other issues. The concept of cleaning up outs is something I think gets overvalued the majority of the time. As I am sure you are aware, the maximum number of outs we can clean up is two. In hands like this with several coldcallers (or limpers in other hands) it is pretty common for them to have aces in which case we are only cleaning up one out and sometimes none.

As far as your assetion that the SB has AJ, I think that being concerned about AJ is an excellent idea since he did call 3 bets before the flop and lead into a large field including a tightish preflop raiser and a 3 bettor. That shows a lot of strength and unless he sucks I would be worried about sets as well since there aren't many hands that will call 3 and lead into a Js8h2s flop when we hold the AsTs.

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Agree with most of what you are saying but sb NEVER checks AJ on this turn. Lets say he does have AJ, he leads into a pf 3 bettor then tries to get ticky on the turn w/a flush and strait draw on the board? Just doesn't make sense. He'd bet the turn there everytime.

Set seems kinda fishy for him as well b/c most of the time he'd just bet out and hope to 3 bet, especially w/the obvious flush and strait draws on board. This smells like a combo draw like 9Ts or some other flush draw outta sb. Button should have AK/AQ here but certainly could have TT, 99, KQ, KJ or the wtf 7s7x. I think you can certainly bet here as the pot is big enough that you don't want to let button or sb draw for free. Even if button raises you have plenty of equity and if BB cold calls your almost free rolling AK. Don't forget that button can have AK/AQ ~75% and this is still a profitable bet b/c of your outs.